How can we get rid of the New Atheists’ reason for being?

Citizen Oluwatoyin Oluseesin was killed recently by irate students of the Government Day Secondary School, Gandu, Gombe State, where, until her gruesome murder, she was a contract staff member.

The deceased was reportedly assigned to invigilate the SS1 students who were writing their Islamic Religious Knowledge paper when she observed that one of the students was attempting to smuggle some books into the examination hall. Sensing that a foul play was about to take place, she allegedly collected the books and threw them outside.

Unfortunately, that simple act of preventing the occurrence of fraud was to prove fatal for Mrs. Oluseesin. Unknown to her, a copy of the Holy Qur’an was among the books she allegedly collected from the aberrant student and threw outside. Newspaper reports claimed that she was attacked outside the school premises after the examination and beaten to death by the students for allegedly desecrating the holy book. Efforts made by the principal of the school, Mr. Mohammed Sadiq, to control the rampaging students, the reports further claimed, proved abortive. His attempt to protect the victim by hiding her in his office also failed. He was reportedly beaten up by the riotous students who also burnt down his car as well as three classrooms, the school’s clinic, library and the administrative block.

Acting on religious belief is unjustified. The sooner we accept this concept for judging any behaviour in the public domain that attempts to use religious belief as an excuse, the sooner religious apologists will have to stop pretending that religious belief’s intrusion into areas of public policy, law, education and governance is somehow acceptable. It isn’t. Religious belief has no business in the public domain because it is informed by nothing but assertion and assumption.

Want to get rid of the New Atheists’ reason for being and protect people like Oluwatoyin Oluseesin from the hatred of the religious mob? What better way than making public expressions of religious faith tantamount to an attack on religious freedom and supporting the return of religious belief to the private domain where each of us has the freedom to believe whatever delusion that comforts us the most and leaves our neighbours free from us attempting to reduce their rights and freedoms and dignity of personhood in the name of some unjustified religious belief?

You’ve got me wondering… are there any examples of the non-religious acting out in extreme ways based upon science and reason? The religious have everything from the crusades to terrorists to the Westboro Baptist Church. The non-religious, logical individuals who promote reason over faith? Nothing comes to mind, but correct me if I’m wrong.

None that I can think of off hand but the non-religious are as individual as any other group. One way to think of claims about particularly nasty people who supposedly represent atheists and secular humanists is to ask yourself: did this person do what he did because of reason? Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Kim Il Jong are the usual canards against atheists.

Hitler was also a vegetarian – I must admit I tired of the linking of Hitler to Atheism, it is so obviously a poorly attempted smear by fundamental Christians. Hitler was brought up a Roman Catholic – much of the Nazi ‘branding’ incorporates Christian symbolism. Some people have tried to say that Hitler was a devil worshiper or pagan, even Hitchens says Hitler was pagan – I think Hitchens is wrong, Hitler found himself in a difficult religious position, because he wanted to get rid of the Jews, but Christ was a Jew, so Hitler had to re-invent Christianity, and there is evidence of this in his book, which also has strong religious tones in it – Hitler thought he was doing gods work!

Hitler, didn’t believe he was an evil man – he thought he was right. The fact that he is at odds with our modern morality is confused with what he and most of Germany held up to be the moral standard at the time. The German people didn’t think they were anymore evil than western countries do to today – over such injustices and crimes against humanity as famine and the world arms trade. In addition, even if Hitler was a atheist vegetarian, most of Germany at the time were Christian – that would be the same Christians that formed the armies of the Third Reich, the same Christians that manned the death camps, formed the political alliances locally and nationally to ensure the Nazi party had power… to this end the religion provided no additional safe guards against Hitlers politics – because the religious agreed with him by providing the man power and political will. If religion has any bearing on morals and the actions of people, then people like Hitler would not get into power in the first place.

The British (another Christian Country) invented the death camp and killed thousands of innocent people during their occupation of India and Africa while maintaining their empire. Hitler was born of that age, he didn’t think what he was doing was any different or less moral than what he had read and experienced himself. The war is often portrayed in modern film and books as a fight against evil – but the fact remains that the true nature of the Nazi’s horrendous crimes were not discovered (mainly) until the end of the war – so the war had nothing really to do with Hitler being evil (while it was happening), it was to do with Hitler upsetting the balance of power in western Europe.

You lurch from one extreme to another. How about just outlawing violence, oh that’s right it is illegal already! Your “solution” to religious violence is the indiscriminate suppression of all religion? Nice way to squash human rights.

Leaving Hitler aside as being over-used, there’s Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao. All were atheists crusading for the destruction of religions, all had numerous followers to help them, and all committed atrocities that surpass anything done in the name of religion.

Are you suggesting these guys were motivated by atheism? That establishing atheism – non belief in supernatural agency – was their goal, that these totalitarian regimes were created primarily to suppress religion and not to eliminate any and all opposition to making themselves the state? That the actions undertaken by these totalitarian leaders were done in the name of atheism and not for self-aggrandizement and complete control?

If you replace the term ‘atheism’ with ‘vegetarianism’, perhaps you can see more clearly why your suggestion is ludicrous as a reflection of totalitarian motivation.

They were not doing it in the name of atheism – they were crushing religion to make it easier to replace it with their own ideology. It was not their intention to promote atheism, it was their intent to promote communism or Starlin-ism (or whatever), and atheism was a tool that enabled them to do that. Starlin used religion to segregate those who believed in him from those who did not – so if you happened to be an atheist like him you lived.

Starlin didn’t believe in god – and so what? Starlin was also a communist, and helped us to defeat Hitler during WWII – his atheism is as irrelevant as it was not his ultimate motive.

Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin – in other words he wanted people to believe in him and not god – he elevated himself into that position, in much the same way his holiness Catholic Pope does, or the Queen of England does, and again he didn’t see himself as evil – he thought he was doing the right thing to better his country, and saw his crimes as collateral damage in much the same way that Harry Truman saw the projected casualty figures that he was informed with before he gave the order to drop two nuclear bombs on Japan killing 250,000 people most of which would have been civilians.

Would you put down the fact that the Americans dropped two thermonuclear bombs on two densely populated Japanese cities during WWII down to a strong Christian belief (Truman was a Baptist) – or was he doing the right thing for your country or the world?

“8.The civilized solution is to enforce the law. We aren’t in Nigeria.”

Nope the civilised solution is not to elevate supernatural beliefs above the human rights of others, which is what secular laws are intended to convey. But the law is no use if it’s moral standing is overruled by religious hysteria that is based on no evidence what so ever – as is clearly the case in this situation.

So what the women through out a book – did she deserve to die for it? Under any circumstances law or not? And why do we have to have laws to protect people from religious loonies that think they can take a life if they get offended that no one believes in their fantasy fairy story?

If I shred the Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue in front of every stamp collector in the world, and spit on it – would you expect a mob of stamp collectors to beat me up for my crimes against philately, and their basic human rights to collect stamps? I thought not – so why is it any different with the Koran or Bible – it is a book, made of paper and words – the destruction of which accidental or intentionally by anyone does not warrant a death sentence.

I get offended by religious indoctrination – by the denial of evolution and the defacement of the Origin of Species by creationists all the time – lots of things offend me, but I don’t go around stoning people to death who offend me (i.e. the religious) – and I do not need laws to prevent me from doing it either.

“Want to get rid of the New Atheists’ reason for being…? What better way than making public expressions of religious faith tantamount to an attack on religious freedom…”

If this were public policy, it would condemn Jesus himself. This is the kind of thinking that threw Daniel into the lion’s den. It is the kind of thinking that has led to violence and persecutions in the past. What if someone were to make that statement against atheism? I know you don’t want to consider the possibility that Jesus was God in person, but there’s a lot of evidence that says he was.

misunderstood,

This woman certainly should not have been attacked for what she did. I would say the same thing if someone were attacked by persons who “claimed” to be Christians. Christians don’t believe in stoning people. If you will remember, Jesus said, “Let whoever is without sin among you cast the first stone.” That statement of Jesus means there are no people who can cast stones.

No – they shoot them instead. Abortion doctors, scientists that perform research into genetics, cloning and DNA analysis – many live in fear for their lives and still continue to do their work.

Now I understand that not all Christian’s are so militant, but what gives those that are the audacity to claim that they have the right to do this in the first place – and is it based on demonstrable fact?

The answer is NO. The bible is a story book, translated over thousands of years, written decades after the life of Christ – it doesn’t have witnesses, or facts to back it up – nothing, just a greedy group of Churches that have been using the fear of god to manoeuvre themselves into a powerful position in society, who publish their morals onto us because they say that they have a direct line to god – a god that they can not prove exists.

“If this were public policy, it would condemn Jesus himself. This is the kind of thinking that threw Daniel into the lion’s den. It is the kind of thinking that has led to violence and persecutions in the past. What if someone were to make that statement against atheism? I know you don’t want to consider the possibility that Jesus was God in person, but there’s a lot of evidence that says he was.”

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In an increasingly connected world, only the secular views of society will prevent conflict. The reason for this is that societies are merging at faster rates technically, physically and socially. This means that ideas, philosophies and religions are aggregated to a point at which they converge – religions are no longer separated by geographical boundaries.

Take for example in the UK where we have millions of Muslims mixing everyday in work and socially with millions of Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and Atheists – which religion has the right of law? Should my wife now have to wear a burka because we now live in the proximity of Muslims?

If we say it is Christian country, therefore they are Christian laws; then the Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Atheists get offended. If we try to balance it with Islamic law the Christians and the Atheists get offended and so on. To make it even more complicated some religious people do not agree with other religious people in the same religion, so some Muslims think women should cover their faces in public, and others do not – who is right?

So actually the least route of resistance is the secular establishment of law, which can not be based on any particular faith, and must therefore be based on humanitarian needs and rights that apply to all people equally, these often come down to free choices over whether an individual wants to believe in a particular faith or not. As an Atheist I have no problem with religious law so long as it does not interfere with human rights that have been established from secular principles.

So secularists are not condemning Jesus, or any other prophet – they are actually providing a social structure that allows you to worship Jesus if you want to, and Atheists to worship no one if they want to.

As soon as you elevate one labeled part of society over another, then conflict arises between the factions as has happened repeatedly throughout history, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Africa, India etc etc.

The New Testament was written by the witnesses. It is their testimony. They carefully point out how the events of Jesus’ life fulfilled Old Testament prophecies.

It’s a matter of history that the Old Testament was translated into the Greek language 250 years before Christ. That translation is one of the versions the New Testament writers quoted from to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

That same book describes the world we’re living in right now, and predicts the course the world will follow. Secularism will never be tolerant of Jesus. That would require a real change of heart.

Do you even know how the bible was written or how Christianity was spread?

I can tell you, most of it comes from the apostle Paul, and most of what he wrote came from a vision (a dream) – in the dream he claims that god told him to go forth and spread the word of Jesus, and he did. As he travelled, he taught people (from his dream) about Jesus, and the early Catholic Church was formed.

He also wrote letters, about 80,000 words on the Christian religion. But here is the really interesting thing, if Jesus was a human that had recently lived, no one told Paul – Paul NEVER mentions, Mary & Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, King Herod or any of Jesus’ miracles. He never mentions Jesus having a ministry of any kind at all. In fact Paul does NOT know anything about the story of Jesus. The only thing he does mention is that Christ dies on the cross, and is then resurrected and the ascension to heaven – but even these Paul never places on earth.

Paul is not even aware that Jesus was a human being – and he is the link between Jesus’ supposed death and the writing of this historical fact that is based on witnesses!

This is the historical fact that you are referring to! – with witnesses, which is nothing of the sort.

You are actually putting faith in a dream that someone had – would you put your faith in my dreams? What if I dreamt about a god called ‘tosh’ who said to me that if you didn’t believe in ‘tosh’ you would burn in acid for eternity – would you believe then?

As for prophecies – you need to get your head around the order of things first before you make such a claim.

A real prophecy is where I predict that Iceland will fall into the sea on January the 22nd 2011 – and then it happens, for everyone to see. That is a convincing prophecy. Reading about something already written and manipulating the current circumstances to fit into something that as already is written is not a prophecy.

So saying a Messiah will come who cures the sick, could be your local medical doctor – it is not evidence of a prophecy.

The Jews do not even think Jesus is the Messiah – yet Jesus and Paul were both Jews.

As for being born a virgin and all that mumbo jumbo – there are about 25 claimed gods, that were born of virgins that are littered throughout history. Christian’s think they are spreading the ‘new news’ of god – but they are not, they are spreading the legends of old – remastered by the Catholic church – it is obvious, if you do a little reading without your Jesus blinkers on.

In addition, to this glaring issue with the Christian account of what happened – there are books that were not included in the bible by the Church that tell different stories about Jesus – ever wondered why they were not included?

The Gospel of Thomas which is a gnostic account of Jesus tells a different story to the one the Catholic Church adopted – why? Both claim to be the true word of Jesus, both claim to record what Jesus said and did during his life time – only one set of events is adopted by the church – why?

The reason why – is because there is more magic in the gnostic gospels, tall claims that are even taller than walking on water – like Jesus changing his mates into animals for a laugh – real Harry Potter stuff, that would make you laugh.

But the biggest reason for them not being included is that he text contains a possible allusion to the death of Jesus in logion – and doesn’t mention crucifixion, resurrection, or final judgement; nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus – as such it was discredited by the early church, mainly because it contradicts the other gospels.

There are other Gospels that were not included in the canon:

Gospel of Marcion
Gospel of Mani
Gospel of Appelles
Gospel of Bardesanes
Gospel of Basilides
Gospel of Cerinthus

This is not all of them – there are many more… so the true Bible is nothing of the sort, it is a frankenstein book, edited, translated and put together by a team of people who were attempting to tell a consistent story about the life of a man – who probably never existed. There is no fact, there is hearsay and conflicting legend, that has been filtered by the church to help keep the faith strong amongst believers and the clergy. But the Catholic church failed – they failed because even the modern bible – their account of what happened is riddled with logical errors, mistakes and contradictions, that no all knowing god would ever sanction or write.

I know very well who I put my trust in, and I know why. I also know that communicating these things is very difficult. Paul, ( Saul of Tarsus )as you know had persecuted the early church. That all changed when he met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus, ( Acts 9:1-27 )

Besides Paul, there are 7 or 8 other writers of the New Testament. If I remember correctly, 5 of them were the Apostles of Jesus. Two others were associated with Paul, and we’re not sure who wrote “Hebrews.” The arguments against Jesus and these followers went on from day one. It wouldn’t make sense to add writings that distort the truth to our Bible.

These other books have their place. There are also many other writings of early Christians which could have been included in the Bible. They weren’t included because they wouldn’t have added anything substantial.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are matters of history. We have the writings of secular historians, plus many other extra-Biblical sources. If Jesus didn’t live and die as has been recorded, you wouldn’t have all the arguments about him in all those ancient books. You also wouldn’t have had all those early Christians dying for their testimony. Those people were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. So am I.

It wouldn’t make sense to add writings that distort the truth to our Bible.

And there lies the rub: the assumption you make, TMO, is that the bible is truth. MUR explains clearly why that assumption is (at the very least) controversial, and you come back with justifying the assumption you make with the same assumption! That’s why your thinking about the veracity of the bible is like a broken record: you assume it to be true because you assume it to be true and nothing anyone can add to this repeated thinking pattern no matter how well justified and informed CAN break the cycle of unjustified belief you have encircled around your reasoning.

TMO – we can’t even believe what was written in the newspapers yesterday because it is commentary (someone else’s view) – and as modern humans we are skeptical of the media. So how can you believe something that was written 2000 years ago and has been translated and altered thousands of times…? You can’t without making a massive assumption.

At least with modern news reporting, there are other news sources that are in competition with each other, and we have photography, and most importantly living witnesses – yet we are still skeptical, and rightly so because we know the reality of human nature.

Why is it that if I said that a family member of yours committed a terrible crime, that you would demand hard evidence before you would allow society to prosecute him, yet you will justify your religion based on a book that doesn’t even read coherently, and has almost no evidence to support it?

TMO – faith is exactly that faith, without the need for evidence, so by all means have faith in Jesus or Zeus or whatever, but if you do what ever you do don’t look at the evidence – because there isn’t any, if there was there would be one religion, only one, and we would all believe and follow it like dog follows his master.

For me, I have to have evidence hard fact things I can see and touch, just like Thomas the Apostle – who according to the bible would not believe Jesus had risen until he poked his finger in the wound – I am afraid I would have to do the same, before I would accept that anyone was more special in a supernatural way to you or I.

The main issue with religion, and possibly something you will never understand is that it can not interfere with the rule of society – such rule must be based on fact, real evidence that is demonstrable and repeatable. So if your religion says that it is a sin to have same sex marriages, perform research on stem cells, allow abortions etc… then before that becomes law, we need facts as to know why – not hearsay, not some scribblings in a 2000 year old book – full on fact that show the benefits and disbenefits to mankind for not adopting (or adopting) that law, which are in real measurable terms – that is reason. And this is how most of the laws in a well run society are created, smoking laws, seat belt laws, childcare laws – based on research and statistics – not on blind faith, it is not perfect, but so far it has advanced society as as a result our standard of living has improved beyond measure.

I didn’t just make an assumption that the Bible was true; I became convinced of if after investigated it for myself. You are right to be skeptical up to a point. It wouldn’t be wise to believe something life-changing without good reason for it. It also wouldn’t be wise to disbelieve something of this magnitude if it actually is true.

One of my initial questions about the Christian faith was, “How can I trust in something that I really don’t believe?” The answer is that nearly all of us who eventually accept Jesus go through sort of a scientific method, trial and error type of process. We may not keep a journal recording all our trials and failures, along with all the details of the variables, but it would probably be helpful to other people if we did. We do sometimes give a testimony, which is kind of along that line.

There are some things that are harmful, yet laws against them fail because there’s too much sentiment against the law. Sometimes the research is biased, or not well done. I’ve always felt like the Church has done very poorly in this area. The Church has always been weak so far as explaining the “why” of things. That has never worked well, and hardly at all these days.

I really think Science should be looking at the rib, instead of stem cells from embryos. If God could make a woman from a man’s rib, why couldn’t we (with enough trial and error). I’m afraid that even then we’d end up making some sad mistakes, yet not so many as we will by harvesting embryos for research.

I really think Science should be looking at the rib, instead of stem cells from embryos.

In a nutshell, embryonic stem cells can proliferate for more than a year in the lab creating millions more non differentiated (can become any kind of) cell. On the one hand, studying these cells can lead to better understanding how this happens and why abnormal (cancerous) cells are created. On the other hand, studying the cells of the rib means studying cells that are already differentiated (they make rib cells).

By the same reasoning, we should study divine wind co-mixing with dust for the origin of life. Such literalism from (one of) the genesis myths is simply not rational. If you can first determine whether life comes from dust or ribs to help biologists focus their research, this may go a long way to helping and guiding these earnest folk to find these answers. Or perhaps rather than asking and receiving uninformed advice from those who actually believe biblical literalism offers us anything of scientific value whatsoever without the slightest indication that this claim is true, perhaps we should ask biologists – the very folk who have dedicated their academic and research lives to the field under question – and ask THEM where they think is a really promising place to start. I strongly suspect the near universal answer will be: let’s start (like your life and theirs and mine) with embryonic stem cells. By gum, isn’t that exactly what they ARE studying? Wow. What are the chances of that random happening?

Come on, TMO. You’ve got to admit that suggestion to look to the rib really is remarkably silly.

“I really think Science should be looking at the rib, instead of stem cells from embryos.”

Oh come on – stop lying to yourself, next you will be telling me that the earth is 6000 years old, and that Dinosaurs were put in the fossil record by Satan, to test our faith.

Just because you don’t understand the science doesn’t mean that it is wrong. In fact many of these so called moral beliefs regarding cloning and stem cell research are modern day beliefs that have been dreamt up by irrational people who know nothing about science, because they never bothered to look – and even when they did look they failed to understand it so assumed it must be the devils work. The bible says nothing about cloning or stem cells at all – so how you can use it as your guide to know whether it is right or wrong not to research these areas is just stupid.

Do some research – proper research, go find out how proper research is done – before you make such obtusely stupid statements of science.

God was able to obtain every type of cell in the human body from a rib, so there’s a way of doing it. I’ve read that when certain conditions are met, the human rib will regenerate itself, so there’s something unusual about the rib anyway. There are many things like this in the Bible. When a certain level of knowledge is achieved, you can look back at some statement in the Bible and actually understand it. I’m going to try to get a list of some of these things.

themysteryof, do you believe horoscopes? Or are you aware that the way they are written means that they could apply to almost any individual?

The bible has the same level of ambiguity, which is why religions argue between each other over the meaning of things within it. Such ambiguity is not proof that the bible is fact, fitting ambiguous statements in the bible to discoveries based on scientific fact does not count as evidence that the bible is correct – anymore than if you read a horoscope that predicted you would feel excitement when meeting with a certain special person… such statements can mean anything, and can apply to anyone.

If the bible provided such easily deductable scientific discoveries – all the scientists of the world would be using it… look no further, it is all in the bible, the answers to everything. The problem is that the answers are not in the bible, and where the bible claims that the answers are within it – on examination they are not. For example:

The mathematical number π is the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference. The value of π truncated at 10 digits is 3.141592653. The bible itself gives us a different value of π.

Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completely.

A circle with a diameter of 10 units should have a circumference of 31.4 units not 30.

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Questionable Motives is a site dedicated to raising important questions in the never-ending battle between rationality and superstition, offering commentary about topical issues, and addressing which of these motivations is truly being served.